Piedras Blancas lighthouse lens has a new caretaker. But will it stay in Cambria?
Responsibility for the circa-1875 First Order Fresnel lighthouse lens from the Piedras Blancas Light Station will shift in March 2021 from the Cambria Lions Club back to the U.S. Coast Guard.
But it’s unclear what that will mean for the future display of the lens and whether it will remain in Cambria or be moved somewhere else.
The stately lens is an elaborate rotating lamp that has been in Cambria for about 70 years. For nearly a quarter century, it’s been housed in a custom-built, glass display structure on Main Street.
Lions Club lens chairman Art Chapman wrote in the club’s November newsletter that “the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) controls the Piedras Blancas Light Station and has agreed to take responsibility for the lens. They are in negotiations with the Coast Guard to take over the loan agreement.”
Calls for information from the public affairs office of the Coast Guard’s Pacific Southwest 11th District, which includes California, were not returned.
Ryan Cooper, the light station’s manager for BLM, confirmed by phone Oct. 29 that “the lens is back in the hands of the Coast Guard now,” he said, “and BLM is going to request to take responsibility for it. Until that happens, it’s still there in Cambria.”
And, he opined, “even if that does happen, it may still be in Cambria. Our feeling so far is the lens has been in Cambria as long as it was ever at the lighthouse.”
However, Cooper said, the Guard could decide “it needs to be in a museum” instead. The lens also could be disassembled and stored somewhere to protect the fragile, aging glass and metal components.
If BLM is allowed to take responsibility, he said, before any changes were made, “we’ll have some public meetings to see what people would want us to do with it.”
In the meantime, those interested in the future of the lens can email their thoughts and concerns to Cooper at racooper@blm.gov.
A traveling lens
How did the historical lens get from the light station to its present home in Cambria?
There was an earthquake on Dec. 31, 1948, that shook the top-heavy lighthouse tower. Later, the Coast Guard determined the tower could no longer safely support the lantern room and the upper three levels of the lighthouse, so those and the lens inside the lantern room were removed.
Eventually, four Lions Club members got Coast Guard permission to move the lens and clockwork mechanism, and the Guard loaned it to them. The plan was for the complex structure to be reassembled on a concrete pad at the Pinedorado Grounds near the Veterans Memorial Building, 1000 Main St. That pad was built in 1951.
In 1994, the high, glass tower that now surrounds the lens was built, after years of work and dedication by such volunteers as Bob Lane, who designed the structure and was a driving force raising funds to get it constructed.
Ever since then, the Lions and/or devoted volunteers have lovingly tended the lens and building. But time and weather — especially dust, rust and by-the-sea humidity — have wreaked havoc on the structure.
The Lions’ loan agreement with the Guard expires in March 2021, and, as Chapman wrote in the newsletter, the club’s board of directors decided recently “to return responsibility of the lens to the Coast Guard because the building is in very bad condition and likely will have to be replaced.”
A new building “would have to meet Coast Guard’s museum-quality standards,” Chapman wrote in the newsletter, and such a building could cost “up to $500,000,” which is way beyond the club’s financial reach.
Chapman said that in recent years, lighthouse docents already had “taken over care of the lens, since we had no club members with the expertise to do the work.”
He added, “This means that the club will not be responsible for maintenance and security of the lens or the building and that the lens will likely remain on the Pinedorado Grounds in Cambria for the foreseeable future, a win-win for the club and the community.”
